


Relationship Counseling

by Mayarene Rose (Paradise_of_Mary_Jane)



Category: DCU (Comics), Teen Titans - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Getting Together, M/M, POV Outsider, oblivious idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 13:57:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17184287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradise_of_Mary_Jane/pseuds/Mayarene%20Rose
Summary: Roy leans over to Donna. His eyes keep doing that thing where they can’t seem to stray away from Dick for too long, always flickering towards him, always watching him, as if he doesn’t even notice. Roy says, “I think I’m in love,” voice full of wonder and surprise like he only just realized now with a significant look towards Dick who’s still sitting with Garth and Lilith at the other side of the clubhouse, and Donna can’t help it. She lets out an incredibly ungraceful snort.Roy glowers.It’s half-hearted at best.Donna has, at some point, become the official Teen Titans relationship and life councilor. It's occasionally hilarious, but for the most part, she objects to it very much.





	Relationship Counseling

**Author's Note:**

> *peeks out from under a table* first time venturing into the dickroy fandom
> 
> Hello everyone! Hope I didn't do too terribly.

Donna doesn’t really understand why the other Titans have apparently chosen _her_ to give them relationship and life advice (probably to do with the fact that she has had, by far, the most normal childhood out of all of them which. And given the fact that she doesn’t even _know_ where she came from, it isn’t really something she wants to get into) but it’s hilarious for the most part, watching her teammates fumble with life, so she doesn’t really mind.

Okay, she minds sometimes. But that’s because playing emotional support for four other emotionally repressed boys is exhausting and definitely not something Donna signed up for when she followed Diana into the world of men.

So when Roy walks over to where she’s sitting on the clubhouse couch, a really serious expression on his face that his fake grin does nothing to hide, and a purposeful swagger in his step in a way that only Roy Harper manages to pull off, and says to her, “I need to talk to you,” Donna prepares herself to be entertained to the fullest because the alternative would be getting irritated and Donna’s having too nice of a day for that. She keeps the thought to herself, though. Gotta keep the boys on their toes, after all.

Outwardly, she keeps a bored expression on her face and says, “what do you want, Harper?”

Dick, from the other side of the room, interrupts whatever story he’s telling Garth and Lilith to give Roy one of the brightest grins Donna’s ever seen and wave at him, saying, “nice to see you here, Speedy!”

Roy’s face completely opens up as he turns to Dick. It’s the literal expression of lighting up. Donna doesn’t bother hiding her smile behind her hand. She catches Lilith’s eye across the room and the two of them resist the urge to burst out laughing. Dick and Roy, as usual, remain completely oblivious.

“Hey Robin,” Roy says. “We gotta talk later, alright? I’m just gonna tell Donna something first.”

“Okay!” Dick says and turns back to Garth and Lilith. Roy turns back to her and his expression has turned a hundred times more awkward.

“I need to talk to you,” he repeats. “It’s important.”

Donna straightens slightly to show she’s paying attention. She puts her chin on her hands. Roy sits down next to her, all faux casual. He’s trying to keep up a grin on his face. Donna wants to tell him that it does absolutely nothing to hide his nervousness but where would be the fun in that?

“So talk,” she says. “I’m listening.”

“So the thing is…” he trails off. “The thing is…”

“Yes?” Donna prompts.

“So I may have recently found something out,” he says. “It’s really unexpected.”

“If it’s what I think it is,” Donna says, “and I’m pretty sure it is, it’s really not unexpected at all. More of a ‘thank Hera this idiot finally realized’ kind of thing.”

Roy’s face turns red all over.

“You could be wrong,” he says weakly.

“I’m definitely not.”

Roy leans over to Donna. His eyes keep doing that thing where they can’t seem to stray away from Dick for too long, always flickering towards him, always watching him, as if he doesn’t even notice. Roy says, “I think I’m in love,” voice full of wonder and surprise like he only just realized _now_ with a significant look towards Dick who’s still sitting with Garth and Lilith at the other side of the clubhouse, and Donna can’t help it. She lets out an incredibly ungraceful snort.

Roy glowers. It’s half-hearted at best.

“I’m serious,” he says.

“I know.”

“I just realized last night.”

And Donna has to stuff her knuckles into her mouth at that just to keep from laughing out loud. Dick, on the other hand, is still having an incredibly animated with Garth and Lilith about the merits of… magic enhanced capture the flag. Huh. Donna had no idea how they even got there. Come to think of it, she’s not really sure what they were talking about in the first place but it was definitely not that.

“So Speedy,” she says cheerfully. “However did you figure out this incredibly not obvious thing in the world out?”

“You can’t have possibly--Don’t tell me you knew before _I_ did?”

“Darling, I’m pretty sure Mal’s figured it out and he’s only met you once.”

Roy opens his mouth, no doubt with another annoyed and witty remark ready on his lips, when he’s interrupted by Dick letting out a laugh, high and loud and clear. Roy’s eyes flicker towards him again, eyes automatically softening. There’s a quiet little smile on his lips and a pink tinge to his ears. Donna thinks that it looks completely adorable.

“Like I said,” Donna says. “Completely obvious.”

“Do you have to be such a pain in the ass about it?” Roy grumbles at her, eyes still on Dick. “Because if you are, I’m going to go to someone else.”

Donna raises an eyebrow. “Who else are you gonna to go to? Wally?”

Roy presses his lips together. Wally, bless his soul, is not here for this conversation, which is definitely a good thing. Donna loves him very much but she’s really not about to take any sort of relationship advice from him.

“Fine,” Roy says. “I need your help. I don’t know what to do.”

“About your emotions?”

“About _being in love._ ”

Donna tilts her head. “You’re being really dramatically male about this and I don’t like it,” she says. “Just tell him how you feel.”

“I can’t just _tell_ him!”

“Why not?”

“It’s him,” Roy hisses. “It needs to be amazing and perfect. You know him best and I need a plan.”

Donna’s eyes narrow. Roy doesn’t do plans. Roy does the exact opposite of plans. He operates best, in his own words, when he’s making it up as he goes.

“So this plan,” she ventures. “Does it involve confessing your undying love for our little Robin or just a lot of romantic shenanigans?”

Roy glares again. His hands are fidgeting on his lap.

Donna decides that this conversation is definitely taking a turn for the exhausting. She puts on her serious face. Sorting out all the ways Dick and Roy are dancing around each other is really too much for the first Monday of May. This needs to be dealt with quickly.

“Okay,” she says. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to ask him out on a date,” Roy says in a rush, like he knows just how thin her patience is. “But I don’t want to pressure him into anything, either? Do you think he likes me back?”

And Donna can’t help any of it this time even if she wanted to, she bursts out laughing. Much to Roy’s annoyance and the others’ confusion.

It’s still kinda hilarious.

\--

Dick and Roy have been dancing around each other ever since Donna’s met them, probably even before, if Wally’s words are to be believed. They’re so painfully obvious about it too. Obvious to everyone but them, that is. Roy does it with a lot of open flirting and swagger that a teenage boy just cannot pull off, and Dick does it by showing more enthusiasm at seeing Roy than a Golden Retriever puppy.

It’s excruciating in an adorable way, like watching two teenage boys being madly in love while denying their feelings in increasingly ridiculous ways. The Titans put up with a lot for each other and this one probably tops the list of ‘things they really should not put up with.’

The first time the Titans finished their first official mission, Wally had nudged her and Garth and said, “wanna place bets on when those two are finally gonna get together?”

“I don’t understand how money works in the world of men,” Donna had told him.

“Me neither,” Garth said.

And Wally had just snorted. “Trust me,” he said. “The two of you would be running banks by the time those two figure it out.”

And so the betting pool started.

\--

Robin is, quite possibly, the single most oblivious person Donna’s ever met. Compliments just usually fly over his head, along with a lot of overt flirting. And that’s nothing on how the guy doesn’t even seem to understand his own emotion. He is perfectly ridiculous.

She’s allowed to say that because he’s her best friend and someone has to.

The fact that Roy is apparently _a lot_ more oblivious and Donna never noticed is either frustrating or hilarious. She’s not sure yet. The fact that he’s taken over her room in the clubhouse and _her stash of chocolate_ to wax poetic about Dick is definitely on the frustrating side.

“He’s just so great, you know?” Roy is saying. “Like, how is he so good at what he does? I mean he just does something and bam! It’s perfect. How is someone so perfect, Donna? How?”

“Yeah,” Donna says, deadpan. “Perfect.” She did not sign up for this. She did not sign up for this at all.

“And you’d expect him to be a little goody-two-shoes, you know? The entire League _dotes_ on him and he has a stick stuck his ass sometimes, so you’d think he’s a little rule follower. But then he goes up to Batman in front of every superhero in existence and basically tells him to go fuck himself--”

“Roy--”

“I mean he’s the only guy I’ve met who has the balls to do that. Not even _Superman_ does that. He just randomly goes skydiving from a flying Batmobile on a whim, you know? _Who does that_?”

“To be fair,” Donna says. “I encouraged him to do that.”

Roy goes on as if he hadn’t heard her. “And he has those big blue eyes. Like a fucking cartoon, man. They’re so wide and I’m pretty sure he uses how innocent those things look to get whatever he wants. _Who could say no to those eyes, Donna_ ? And his costume. _Jesus Christ._ It’s like he knows what he does to me.”

“Roy,” Donna says with as much patience as she can muster. “I’m pretty sure Robin didn’t pick out his costume just to be a tease. He was eight when he designed the thing.”

“Still,” Roy mumbles. “Those thighs. How do you get over those thighs?”

“Alright that’s it.” Donna snatches the chocolate out of his mouth. It’s already mostly eaten. Roy is Donna’s friend and that’s the only reason she doesn’t punch him for eating her chocolate. She doesn’t consider his problem worthy of her chocolate. “I still don’t understand what the problem is. Just ask him out.”

Roy turns red all over. “I _can’t_ just ask him out, Donna,” he says. A pause. “What if he says no?”

“That has literally never stopped you before. What is it you guys say? ‘You never know unless you try.’”

“But this is _Robin_ ,” Roy says. “I can’t just ask him out the way I ask other people out.”

“You mean how you asked me out?” she asks. “With bad flirting and a lot of posturing?”

Roy has the grace to turn red and look completely embarrassed. Their brief and disastrous stint at dating has entered the vault of ‘never to be spoken of ever again unless for blackmail material.’ Dick, Garth, and Wally are nice enough not to mention it either, but she knows they’re just waiting for the perfect time to blackmail them with it.

There is a reason Donna just point blank refuses to date teammates now.

“Yes,” Roy says, still embarrassed. “That kind of thing doesn’t work on him and I want to make it special for him. Not that what we had wasn’t special or anything,” he says in a rush. “Or that it was simple or anything because it’s not. It was great while it lasted but--”

Donna snorts. “Don’t hurt yourself, Harper,” she says. “I get it.”

They were each other’s firsts in a lot of things. First significant other, first kiss, first date, first time making out. The relationship didn’t even last two months but it broke through a lot of firsts.

Being someone’s first almost guarantees they won’t be the last. Donna doesn’t mind. It was good in the beginning and amazing in the middle. They imploded in the end and it ended with a horrible bang, but things were great for the most part and they’re still friends now.

“Dick’s not looking for the kind of thing we had anyway,” he says. “You know he’s much more of a romantic than that.”

“That he is.”

“He’s into all those flowers and candles and stuff.”

“And you have no clue how to do that?”

“Not a single one,” Roy says with a sigh. Which actually makes a lot of sense. Roy never did took her on adventures not romantic dates.

He and Dick would probably end up arguing if he took on whatever ‘adventure’ Roy had taken Donna for a first date.

“I still think you should just ask,” she says. “I don’t think he’s going to say no.”

Roy falls back on the bed with a groan. He puts his face in his hands. Donna decides that she’s had about enough of male dramatics.

“Start with flowers,” she says. “Dick would love flowers. Then ask him out on a date somewhere where your mentor’s car can’t fall off a cliff. Dinner or something. Stop being so dramatic and just do it.”

“Donna--”

“Nope not listening to this.” She pulls him to his feet. He tries to resist but she’s an Amazon and really, that’s just a very dumb thing to do. Once he’s on his feet, she stares him straight in the eye and thinks of the look on Diana’s face when she’s looking at a really dumb man and copies the look. Judging by the look on Roy’s face, it works.

She says, “Get him flowers. Ask him out on a date. And get out of my room.”

“But--”

She narrows her eyes. Roy nods. He gets out of the room.

Donna lets out a sigh of relief and figures that that’s the end of it.

\--

Most bets have non-interference rules. The bet they have encourages active interference because there has never been a more oblivious pair to grace the multiverse and if they didn’t help things out, the two of them would be stuck in pining limbo that’s just painful for everyone involved.

(There was that one time Garth almost drowned Wally by accident while trying to reenact a scene from some movie involving a lake, singing fish, and Dick and Roy on a boat.

Donna had no idea why they thought any of that was a good idea.)

Not that it helps them figure anything out, anyway. Dick and Roy are monumentally _bad_ at dealing with things like emotions.

(By far, their worst attempt at getting those two together was the one that involved alcohol.

It ended with Donna tangled up in a tree with her lasso, Wally in some backwater motel three states over, and Garth floating hungover on their team pool with about thirty different kinds of fish that none of them even knew existed.

It also ended with Dick and Roy locked in a closet for over twelve hours and them _still not getting past talking about the stars stage and increasingly convoluted metaphors of how in love they are that no one actually understands._

It makes a person want to fall into despair. Luckily for those two idiots, Donna doesn’t do despair.)

\--

It was very definitely not the end of it.

Dick goes to her room, hours later, with a bouquet of roses almost as tall as he is, a bewildered look on his face.

“Did you say something to Roy?” he asks. He sets the bouquet down next to her dresser drawer, closing the door behind him with his feet. “Because he shoved this in my hands, mumbled something about you, and ran off and locked himself in his room. I’ve been trying to get him to talk about it for about an hour but...” His face turns red and he mumbles something she doesn’t quite catch.

Donna pinches the bridge of her nose. She prays to all the Gods she knows for patience. The entire thing has stopped being funny a long time ago.

She senses Dick taking a seat in one of the chairs, feels him fidgeting quietly.

“He just mentioned my name?” she asks, still not looking at him. “Nothing else? He didn’t ask _you_ anything?”

Dick’s confusion is almost palpable. “He said some other things but I didn’t really understand. All I got was your name. Was he supposed to ask me something?”

There’s something that’s a lot like nervousness and hope in his voice. So he _has_ noticed. It’s good to know that there’s some people who still has some sense. It’s less good that it’s Donna who has to be dealing with it.

She pins him with a Look. Dick squirms under it.

“I’m not a relationship counselor,” she tells Dick, eyes flickering from him to the gargantuan bouquet and back to Dick.

Dick’s eyebrows furrow. “I know?” and he almost convinces her except for the fact that his face is completely red.

Donna has had enough of it.

She takes Dick’s hand in hers and uses her other hand to take the bouquet.

“Open the door,” she orders and Dick opens the door.

She leads him to Roy’s room at the other side of the clubhouse, careful not to drop the bouquet in her hand, and ignoring the greetings of the other Titans as they pass through the common area.

She kicks down Roy’s door.

(It’s the eight door they’ve wrecked this month, not to mention various other pieces of furniture. Living with a lot of hormonal, superpowered people can get pretty violent. It’s a good thing that Wally doesn’t mind fixing things up in a few seconds.)

Roy is sitting up on his bed, staring at her and Dick with wide eyes. There are still a set of headphones on his head, no doubt playing something with a lot of drums and screaming and manly angst.

Donna drops the bouquet on the floor.

“You know very well that this is not what I meant when I said get him flowers.”

“Dinah picked those out,” Roy protests half-heartedly. “She said they’re good for a romantic date.” It seems that either he hasn’t noticed Dick standing right next to Donna or he’s just pointedly looking at anything but him.

Dick makes a sound that’s a lot like keening. Roy cringes. Donna ignores the two of them in favor of the problem at hand.

She gives Roy a hard look. She snatches his arm and drags him to his feet.

“Alright, alright! Ollie had a lot of input as with it too and I shouldn’t have listened to him!”

“I do not care who picked out the flowers,” she says. She shoves the two boys together so that they’re facing each other and takes a step back, glaring at them and crossing her arms over her chest.

“Fix this,” she says. “Now.”

“Donna--” Dick starts to say.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she says. “You like him. He likes you. The betting pool’s been running for two years and I would really like to get some sleep so the two of you are going to talk about it like normal people. Directly and with no stupid metaphors about stars. Got it?”

She doesn’t wait for an answer. She closes the door behind her. It's a little crooked and doesn't really provide any sort of privacy, but it's the thought that counts. The other Titans are waiting outside, all expectant and raised eyebrows.

Silence. None of them know what to say. Donna can’t remember the last time she got annoyed like this.

“So,” Wally finally ventures. “Does this mean we all owe you money?”

Donna snorts. “Damn right you all owe me money.”

\--

At first, there was a lot of shouting. Not the angry kind of shouting. More of the ‘I’m feeling a lot of emotions right now and I need to shout it to the world’ kind. Then, there weren’t words. Just shouts of joy.

Then, silence. A lot of silence. Donna shares a look with Wally and Garth. She considers this a good thing. They do too.

Dick and Roy emerge three hours later holding hands with identical smiles on their faces. They’re red-faced and their hairs are a mess.

Donna breathes a sigh of relief, three hundred dollars richer.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments give me life <3
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](https://discowlng.tumblr.com) if you want to chat about the Titans or anything DC :D


End file.
